


Where There is Great Love

by stele3



Series: The Tether Series [5]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Disassociation, F/M, Getting Together, Hints of past sexual trauma, Interlude, Jewish!Silver, Judaism, Mentions of Slavery, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, The fucking Getting Together sequence between seasons 3 and 4 that WE ALL DESERVED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: A brief interlude in the Tether series that jumps back in time to...establish certain things.“Do you not have a comb?”Twitching with surprise, Silver turns. The princess—Madi—stands on the shoreline, only a few feet away. Silver quickly glances around and finds her bodyguard standing back near the treeline. Kofi, that’s his name. (Stoic man, much taller than Silver, always has a knife and knows how to use it. Silver would need the captain or Billy with him to survive an encounter.)He smiles for the princess. “I fear that would only make the problem worse. We had little to eat in the doldrums, and that made all of this quite breakable.” He gestures to his hair but lets his hand trail longer through the air. Better that she think them weak and easily overcome. If his own body is to be a metaphor, well, at least he finds it apt.





	Where There is Great Love

_~somewhere in the Caribbean, September 1716_

It begins with a jar of coconut oil.

Or, more properly, it begins with Silver’s hair.

He is attempting to wash it in the lake near the Maroon camp— _attempting_ being the most accurate terminology. The hurricane filled it with salt, but that is no great matter: his hair is perpetually stiff. The trouble, it seems, came from the doldrums, and the lack of rations or fresh water, which turned his hair brittle and thin. It _crunches_ when he turns his head against his pillow at night.

They have pillows, now, having been afforded huts on the leeward side of the Maroon camp. The first night, with a full belly and an actual bed—albeit one made of reeds and a thin pillow of cloth—Silver had nearly cried from relief. He might have, if he’d had enough water in him yet. Even now he wants to drink straight from the lake as he dunks his head below its surface…just open his mouth like a whale and swallow it in one scoop.

Straightening up, he tilts his head to one side and attempts, again, to work his fingers into his hair. It’s slow going and more than a little painful. His scalp is still tender: everything feels fragile, held together by skin stretched too tight against his flesh. No matter how gentle he is, his hair keeps breaking as he tries to untangle it, coming away in handfuls. Exasperated, Silver contemplates the prospect of slashing it all off with a knife.

“Do you not have a comb?”

Twitching with surprise, Silver turns. The princess—Madi—stands on the shoreline, only a few feet away. Silver quickly glances around and finds her bodyguard standing back near the treeline. Kofi, that’s his name. (Stoic man, much taller than Silver, always has a knife and knows how to use it. Silver would need the captain or Billy with him to survive an encounter.)

He smiles for the princess. “I fear that would only make the problem worse. We had little to eat in the doldrums, and that made all of _this_ quite breakable.” He gestures to his hair but lets his hand trail longer through the air. Better that she think them weak and easily overcome. If his own body is to be a metaphor, well, at least he finds it apt. 

She seems to consider that and then wades into the water with no care for her dress or shoes. Silver is accustomed to ladies and whores, neither of which like to have their belongings damaged; but here the clothes are roughhewn and built to last, built to be used rather than to decorate.

“Here,” she says when she reaches his side, hip-deep in the water. She holds out a small jar. “Put this in your hair. It may help.”

“What is it?” Silver asks, taking the jar and peering inside curiously. A gift. He hadn’t expected gifts to be part of their acquaintanceship. They have talked—extensively, even—but only as the princess of the camp and the quartermaster of the ship, both with a mind toward maneuvering their commanders toward a mutually-beneficial pact. Not as the type of familiars who engage in gift-giving.

(What can he give her as a gift? Perhaps he’ll ask Flint for a book. He’s only seen her private quarters the once, but he’d noted her collection. Difficult to find on an island—her father must have brought them to her. Silver has already worked to gain her favor, but if she associates books with tokens of affection then all the better to gift one to her. Flint, of course, imparts them with no less importance, but he can be convinced.)

“Coconut oil,” she says, bringing his mind back to the jar of white, semi-solid goo in his hand. Reaching out, she dips an elegant finger into the open jar and rubs a small amount between her hands. It melts rapidly, becoming clear, and she applies the now-liquid oil to her own locks. “It keeps away the—I do not know what you call it in English. Irun gbigbẹ.”

Their language is still a mystery to Silver—someone on the crew is going to have to learn now that Joshua is dead, and Silver hopes to hell that no one expects it to be him—but he takes her meaning well enough. “I do appreciate the gesture, but I fear that this cause may have ventured beyond any earthly powers to save.”

The princess gets a strangely stubborn expression—and really, looking back, he should have taken that as a warning—before she wets both her hands with the oil and wades closer. “Here,” she says, as her fingers push into his hair. “You must start at the ends, and work upwards.”

Silver takes a long moment to obey, so surprised is he to find himself in this position: naked from the waist up, standing in lake water, while a princess tends to his rank locks. Eventually he does manage to escape his frozen state, and together they untangle the mess on Silver’s head until it hangs halfway down his chest, the curls flattened by the oil into faint waves.

He laughs slightly, picking up one end of his hair and letting it drop back against his chest. “I expect I look like a drowned rat, now. But thank you.”

When he lifts his head, she is close.

She kisses him. Silver blinks, and blinks again. She is close enough that his eyelashes brush her brow. She is a little shorter than him, and much slighter. He fears, suddenly, that he might step on her foot with the peg leg without realizing it, and holds very still.

The water swirls as she steps back, a frown lighting her face. It deepens when Silver darts a glance at Kofi, trying to gauge his response. (The bodyguard is not watching them directly. Is he being polite? Does he disapprove?)

“Do you not wish to be kissed? Or do you not wish to be kissed by _me_?” Madi asks softly.

“No—I mean. Yes. I—that’s quite—forgive me.” He has to stop stammering. She is starting to frown deeper. Silver affects a shaky laugh, not having to falsify the tremor. “You’ve caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

She tilts her head, studying him. (Silver wonders if he should kiss _her_ , or if he would shortly wind up with Kofi’s knife in his kidney.) Already the kiss is starting to slip from his memory—how soft were her lips? What did she taste like? Silver hadn’t been paying attention, his mind too startled to take in the details.

Except then she is stepping back in, and time slows. She gives him all the time in the world to step away, reaching up to lay a hand against the side of his face. Silver is aware of the sun on his back, on the relative seclusion of this part of the beach. (He’d intended to wash the stump once he was done with his hair.) Kofi is still at the treeline. (How much does he report back to the Queen about her daughter’s movements?) Caustics of light move over Madi’s skin and reflect in her eyes. She is _beautiful_. He’d noticed before, of course, but in the same way that he notices the sun has risen or that the wind is blowing: a fact, observed.

Now he _feels_ it, and all his breath rushes to fill the closing space between their lips.

They kiss. She kisses him, and Silver manages to kiss back this time. Her lips are full and soft. She tastes like a berry of some kind.

“You are still surprised,” she murmurs into his mouth.

In the belly of the Walrus they carry a few barrels of seed. It seems an odd thing to carry about on a pirate ship, where space is a premium; and yet as the various plunders came and went, these dusty barrels remained. Doubtless the Captain ordered them kept in, well, in case of their current predicament: marooned on an island with minimal food supplies.

It feels as though carnality has been a similar dusty barrel carried inside of Silver’s belly. Much like the seed, sexual impulses prove useless for years at a time; but when you need them, oh, they can keep death away a little longer. He knows how he looks…or looked, anyway. After Charlestown, he had covered this barrel with a lid and stuffed it somewhere to be forgotten, for surely things of that nature would never involve him or what remained of his body ever again. What non-wretched creature would ever want an invalid, scarred and barely able to walk, unwashed and occasionally stinking of infection?

(Even smaller, inside the barrel, is a box which holds Silver’s desire. There is a difference, of course, between fucking and wanting, but this matters little to none at all. Silver has never found the smaller box useful.)

Now he thinks: _she wants something. She wants to seduce me and take something from me. But what the fuck do I have that she would even want? Nothing; so she wants me. Does she not mind the leg? Perhaps they are accustomed to deformities here. Perhaps she means to use this as a way to solidify our alliance._ And then, cracking open that dusty lid: _perhaps_ I _can use this to solidify our alliance. Flint would want me to curry favor with her, she helped him to persuade the queen. We need her as an ally._

Thus resolved, Silver steps closer and cups the back of the princess’ head. He has kissed many people before; he knows how to steal their breath and distract their senses. By the time he pulls away again, the princess’ dark skin glows with a gratifying flush.

“Will you come to my room tonight?” she asks, resting one hand on his chest.

“Yes,” he breathes, letting himself think only that she is beautiful, and she wants him.

It’s only after she smiles and moves away, taking the watchful Kofi with him, that Silver lets himself feel the rest of it: anxiety, doubt, fear.

He needs to talk to Flint, immediately.

-o-

Silver finds Flint on the far side of the lake, overseeing the loading and unloading of cargo. They’d taken a few Maroons out to sea on a short excursion, to gauge which men—and a few of the village women, as well—would prove most seaworthy. Apparently, that had proven successful, for during their return they’d captured a small prize.

Stopping in the shade of the trees—(What kind of leaves are these, anyway? They’re ridiculously huge. He could balance an infant child on one and send him drifting down the river. Do they have plants like this in Egypt?)—Silver takes a moment to look Flint over and get a feel for his mood. He looks calm, but this is deceptive: several times during their acquaintance, Flint has given the appearance of utter calm just before the killing starts. Since Charlestown and the death of Mrs. Barlow, he has seemed a glassy-eyed automaton, a creature that shed its true flesh and exists now only through force of cold, empty will.

That’s changed since coming to the camp. Silver would say that Flint’s revivication is due to having a newfound purpose in the plan to retake Nassau—certainly Flint is happiest with a goal in mind, though ‘happy’ is perhaps the wrong word—but he intuits that there’s another reason.

With Flint, there always is.

Still, Flint is ordering men about as they move supplies—or, well, carefully ordering the Walrus men about, while giving humble advice to the Maroons enlisted to help them. Nothing settles him like giving orders, so Silver judges this as good a time as any to converse.

“The fuck happened to you?” Flint asks by way of greeting. “You look like a drowned rat.”

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware. A local treatment, apparently, it was either this or emulate you and not all of us care to shear our heads like spring sheep. Can we talk?”

That gets all of Flint’s attention, which is always gratifying. The man’s brain houses a thousand different thoughts at any given moment and probably half of them relate to sails and fathoms and sea currents; Silver appreciates being able to break the surface and find Flint’s eyes focused on him. “About what?”

How to phrase this? Silver leads them a few more steps from the crew and Maroons. “The princess of the Maroons has—approached me with an interest to deepening our relationship.”

“I believe that’s the intent of us all, to what specific task did she bend your ear?”

“To deepening _my_ relationship with _her_.”

An appreciative amount of surprise crosses Flint’s expression. Silver can’t help but feel relieved; if Flint didn’t see this coming, either, then Silver is not that far off his game. Admittedly, Flint lacks his skill at appraising the motivations of others, but he is far more keen than any other person Silver has met, and Silver is man enough to rely on Flint’s input when needed.

It is _very_ needed at the current juncture.

Flint strokes his goatee, frowning out over the field. “Do you think this a cultural aspect of their people?”

“No—she approached me in private, accompanied only by one of her bodyguards. At first I thought, perhaps, that she might be seeking intelligence, but what possible fucking thing could she learn from me in bed that they haven’t tortured out of the three men they killed when first we landed here?”

“A certain Franciscan friar from Ockham would say that the simplest solution is usually correct,” Flint muses. Because of course he has to bring fucking philosophy into every fucking conversation. “You think she simply desires you?”

At any other time Silver would have made a sly comment about his attractiveness or likeability; he’s felt neither attractive nor likeable in recent memory. “Possibly?”

Flint lifts an eyebrow. “Did she _say_ that she desired you?”

“Not in—so many words.” Christ, Silver feels like a stammering fool. He’s only recently gained Flint’s respect, he thinks that even the slightest slip will whip it back out of his hands. “She’s invited me to her room, tonight.”

“That soon?”

“Apparently. I thought it prudent to—I am not at my best. Neither of us—none of us are at our best. I would prefer to know that you do not think this a rash or ill-thought decision likely to get us all killed.”

A corner of Flint’s mouth deepens. “Are you that bad in bed? No—Silver, wait,” he calls as Silver indignantly turns to stomp away. Flint follows him a little, edging closer and ducking his head, which is enough to halt Silver’s retreat. “Does the princess strike you as the sort of person who would punish a man or his allies if he rejects her advances or if their liaison, once kindled, thereafter turns to ash?”

That’s easy. “No, not in the least.”

“So there is nothing to lose, here. I would not have you think that our alliance hinges upon your…relations with her. Deeper ties must be forged between our camps but there is no reason that it should fall entirely to you, nor that this must be the form it takes. But it certainly can’t hurt. I suppose the only question is, absent those considerations, whether you actually _want_ to.”

“Absent those considerations? Absent the alliance between our camps and the likely disaster and death that would befall us if it unravels?”

That same twitch in the corner of Flint’s mouth. “Yes, those.”

Does he want to? What kind of question is that? Those that _want_ are usually the ones being taken for their coin or their cooperation, or both. Silver has sold his body more times than he can count, but always made sure that his buyer paid the price of their desire, even if it wasn’t in coin. Flint, though—Flint, with his recently-lost lover (or whatever the fuck Mrs. Barlow was) would not see it that way.

(Why has he never once considered using this tactic on Flint?)

“I’ll keep you informed of the situation,” Silver says, and stomps away.

-o-

Alone in the hut he usually shares with DeGroot and Billy, Silver removes his clothes and looks down at his body. He is still thin, and there’s a worrying itch near the skin of the stump. He is circumcised, but so are many of the Maroon men; he doubts that will raise any hesitations in the princess that have not been raised by the rest of him.

Silver thinks back to his previous liaisons, trying to recall which aspects of his self had drawn complimentary attention that still remained to him. His form was of course now shattered, bent to a limping gate where once he’d swaggered; that is no help to him. He recalls several comments about his eyes, so lucky that he still has both of those. His hair certainly has drawn admiring gazes.

Madi left him with a bar of soap, well-used and smelling faintly of some kind of flower. He scrubs it thoroughly into his hair and then scrubs it thoroughly out, mindful of the men’s noses. Perhaps he can blame any lingering scent on time spent in her bed, once the night is through. His hair, at least, dries to something more normal: still impossibly curly but manageable. He considers putting it back in a queue or a half-queue, but she had worked the oil through it with such diligence. Perhaps that had been her goal all along.

He leaves it loose and hopes that he doesn’t meet any of the Walrus men between here and there.

-o-

He pulls away from her, moves to sit on the edge of her bed as he tries to understand what his body is doing. It shakes. As he looks down at his hands, they do not seem to belong to his wrists. They sit at the top of his wrists and move about as if pulled by invisible strings. He watches the palms press together, fingers curling and uncurling.

A hand on the skin of his shoulder. Silver folds to its slight pressure and lies down on the bed.

Madi is reading.

“For when my outward actions doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart / In compliment extern, ‘tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”

Finishing this stanza, she glances at the figure lying in the middle of her bed. Silver has moved a few times, instinctual twitches of the body that have increased over the last few minutes. His eyes rove about the room, more confused and curious now than frightened.

Slowly she sets the worn book aside on the blankets. He tracks the movement, even turning his head to look at her. There’s a long moment as she watches him slowly recognize her, and with recognition rides fear, though whereas before it had been aimless and suffocating, now he fears _her_ very specifically, and whatever she is going to do now.

What she does is reach for a bowl sitting next to her bed. She offers it to him and Silver takes it, sitting up and drinking slowly. As he does so she sees his mind work as a worm in the soil, churning.

There are several explanations of his behavior available to him: he is still dehydrated from their time in the doldrums. It might not be a lie, all the pirates are brittle with too much sun and salt. Or perhaps he was overcome by fervor. She has heard of Christians entering a state of heightened emotions, usually in battle or in worship of their god, similar to the medicine man of their own tribe.

But she knows, somehow, that none of these are the true reason that John Silver spent a long time laying in her bed staring at nothing.

So when he lifts his head from the cup, his face smooth with the lie he is about to tell, she says, “Do not.”

When she was a child, her mother used to take her onto the cliffs above the sea where the wind blew strong. There, she taught Madi how to speak. At first the wind shouted her down, stole the words out of her mouth; but Madi learned to tighten her belly and lift her words from that foundation, to stand up straight so they rose out of her with ease instead of the angry grunts of Christian men. She became the wind, pushing ships where she willed not by force but by filling the sails of others and steering where they needed to go.

She speaks to John Silver with the voice of the wind: “Whatever you are going to say next is unnecessary in this room. If you still wish to tell me, you may. But I do not need to hear.”

He regards her as one would look upon an unfamiliar animal, whose teeth and claws have not yet been appraised for their sharpness. Ignoring his skepticism, Madi takes back the cup, drinks from it, then rises and begins to make herself ready for her day.

Behind her on the bed, John Silver says, “Forgive me, but I find myself at a loss. Why am I here?”

“You are here because I invited you and you accepted.” Keeping her back to him, Madi removes her robe and steps into her skirt, tying it around her waist. When she looks over her shoulder Silver is watching with an appreciatively glassy expression, so it is not a lack of desire that led to last night’s faltering. She wonders at the extent of his question: does he not remember coming here last night? Or does he wonder at his continued presence?

Still topless, she approaches him. His eyes dip only briefly: he seems more taken with reading her face.

“Perhaps you thought that I sought advantage over you in making the invitation,” she says, picking up the shirt that lies on the bed next to him. “Or perhaps you sought advantage over me by accepting. Know that the first is not true. I do not sell my body, even for the sake of my people. If the second is true, then I do not blame you for doing so, for the sake of your own people.

“But that, too, is unnecessary.” Binding the ties on the front of her shirt and tucking her beaded necklace underneath, Madi stands before him—stands over him, slightly, but his wariness does not increase. Instead he tips his head back and studies her close.

She leans down slowly until their lips meet. A light press of their bodies together. He kisses back slowly with his eyes still open, as if he wants to read her expression even this close.

When they part, Madi lets both her hands fall to frame his face. “I would have you come back to me tonight, but only of your own will. Freely, without any reason other than your desire to be here. Otherwise, never set foot in this room again.”

Turning, she leaves him there and sets about beginning her day.

-o-

Madi spends the morning among the builders, who are overtaxed and let her know it. No one wants the pirates to live too close to them, but that means the jungle must be cleared before more huts can even be built. Madi listens to their complaints and promises to send more workers to help, then spends hours carrying branches and cut logs down to the carpenters. She takes work in all parts of the village—the better to understand the needs of the people she will one day rule—but she does have a certain fondness for carpentry. She likes to watch them strip the bark from the wood and cut pieces to some mental specifications of size and shape, before putting these pieces together in unexpected ways. Everything they have in the village has come together in this way.

Olabisi finds her during the afternoon meal. She is an ancient, scarred woman who spied for the community longer than Madi has been alive. Usually Madi’s father would send her among the plantations, as Olabisi has the ability to fade into the woods, the grass, the earth itself. The eye slides off her. Now, though, she has been tasked by Madi’s mother with watching over the pirates in their midst.

That she is coming now to speak with Madi is…notable, and not entirely unexpected. Certainly, her mother tries to include Madi in the important decisions of their village, especially regarding the alliance for which Madi advocated; but she does not usually receive reports directly from Olabisi.

Madi can easily guess at the reason for her presence, now, and knows that whatever is said, her mother will have heard first.

She nods to Olabisi, taking the older woman’s cup of tea as she seems to have difficulty lowering herself to sit on the wooden step beside Madi. _Seems to_ , of course. Madi has seen Olabisi run flat out through the forest in pursuit of an escaped prisoner and leap on his back to cut his throat from ear to ear.

Once she has arranged her shawl around her again, Olabisi accepts her cup back from Madi with a smile that folds her face endlessly. “<A princess should not sit alone,>” she says in Twi.

“<The sun is too lovely today to sit inside,>” Madi answers, “<but I welcome your company.>”

“<Too much company in the village these days. It’s hard to find a place to sit among all these Christian men, but they will be gone again soon, and take many of our people with them.>”

“<Did the pirate captain treat them well?>”

“<Well enough. You must watch that one. They speak of him among each other, call him a demon. They fear him even as they follow him, and they’ve lost many from the crew in his service. How can such a man who does not care for his own people be trusted with ours?>”

Olabisi does not frequently give counsel in her reports. Madi searches the village but does not see the distinctive red hair of the captain. “<I will remember that and I thank you.>”

There follows a lull in the conversation, as Olabisi sips her tea and Madi waits. She suspects that Olabisi is drawing out the moment in order to read _her_ reactions, and she struggles to control her fingers, which want to fidget around her own cup.

Finally, Olabisi gestures to a pirate seated on a walkway perpendicular to their own. “<That one is named Harris.>”

Madi studies Harris. He sits alone, doing something with a length of rope that doesn’t seem especially productive. He is somewhat gaunt, as all the pirates are, but even from this distance Madi can see that his eyes are red-rimmed and desperate. He is young, probably not much older than Madi herself, with hair the color of tree bark.

“<Yesterday, that one sat at the elbow of the quartermaster of their crew and laughed,>” Olabisi continues. “<He was well-liked by the crew, a favorite at every meal. He sings well.>”

As they watch, several pirates pass near Harris. He looks up as hopeful as a lost dog, but they keep their eyes away from him and walk quickly on their way. Harris slumps again, returning to his fretful tugging at the rope. “<But not today,>” Madi observes. “<What happened?>”

“<Early this morning, he was speaking to the quartermaster, and your name crossed his lips along with such words as Christian men often speak of slave women. Our bodies, their eyes.>” Olabisi sips her tea. “<He said it with a smile, likely thinking it a jest among men.

“<Their quartermaster said nothing to Harris, but went out and spoke to his men, one by one. Since early this morning, Harris has been given no water, no food. Not a single pirate will speak to him. They do not look at him. It is as if he has died, and his ghost haunts this village.>”

They speak a little more, mostly of the recent expedition and how their people were treated aboard the _Walrus_ , before Olabisi leaves her to slip away down to the beach and observe the _Walrus_ being loaded up.

Madi lingers where she is, but does not catch sight of a limping figure, either.

-o-

The exile of Harris lasts until the next morning. By then every pirate in the village is so prodigiously afraid, they fairly leap out of Madi’s way as she makes her way to the first meal, doffing their hats and tugging their forelocks. She nods to them and continues on her way with her head up.

In the meal hut, she watches over the rim of her cup. Harris sits alone, wilted and huddled in his misery—until John Silver approaches with a plate heaped with food that he sets down in front of Harris. When the man lifts his head, Silver smiles and claps him on the shoulder gently.

Harris bursts into tears.

A palpable wave of relief passes over the pirate’s in attendance. Silver sits with Harris while he collects himself, and others of their crew gradually migrate to join them until Harris is once again surrounded with his brethren, resurrected from his earthless grave.

Silver’s point remains, however. Madi had wondered if they might come to resent her, jealous of Silver’s treatment of a white man for the sake of a Maroon woman; but she senses none of that sentiment among the crew as she moves around the village. They nod to her now, smiling, as though they have passed through a storm more terrifying than the one that brought them to this island.

Madi works in the field for a time until twilight grows heavy on the back of the sky. Some of the men and women sing as they work, and not always in their own languages: many have spent time in the plantations of New Providence Island, rescued by her father. There are those who came here not knowing their own tongue, speaking only the words of Christian men. _This is how they would destroy us for good_ , her father told her once. And yet it is useful to hear the English and Spanish and French; it will make for better spies who blend in with the plantations and lead others to safety.

The fields always leave her hands blistered and her back sore, so she joins the others in the lake before returning to her room. By then it is dark, and while the scent of the evening meal is strong, Madi’s body feels heavy with weariness. She turns from the well-lit kitchens and goes towards her room with its large bed and its books.

Except as she draws nears to the zig-zagging stairs she sees the shadow of a man seated outside her doorway.

Madi pauses and all the thoughts she had held at bay during the morning and afternoon come flooding in. At the same time, a prickle lights up the joining of her thighs like the prelude to a thunderstorm.

Lately, the women of the village have taken to making jokes in their own language about clams and the pale, slimy meat inside. Madi has never personally considered Christian men inherently ugly _or_ handsome, but she certainly never thought she would want one this way, much less a pirate who has earned coin from the sale of people like her.

But _oh_ , she wants him.

Madi gestures behind her to send Kofi, her ever-present shadow, away to a distance. He will stay within earshot and be nearer in a flash were she to cry out. It has been thus since she was a child and Madi is not blind to the power imbalance between them. Were John Silver to cry out, she does not doubt that his men would do anything to reach him; but they would have to fight the entirety of her people, and they would lose.

She thinks that perhaps this is part of why she desires him so—in this secret place, _she_ is the one who holds power over him.

Her self-reflection is interrupted by a thump as Silver sets his iron boot on the ground. He has insisted on wearing it despite the pain it causes him; she would admire his willpower were it not so misguided. She waits for him to speak but he only stands in the dark waiting, and so finally she gathers her skirts and walks up the stairs to her room, taking his hand in passing and pulling him after her.

-o-

He shifts his weight as he glances around the room, hiding a wince. She has seen men and women before who suffered the loss of limbs; it was not uncommon for slavers to remove arms from children as punishment to their parents. Among the merchant and pirate crews they had captured over the years, the sea had set its teeth to their bodies. She can tell that his loss was a recent one. 

She wonders at the circumstances. Not the cause: he has already volunteered that. A struggle between captains, between captain and crew, between pirates and the English. But he had elided all mention of _how_ they took his limb. It must have been on board their ship, which is a gruesome prospect. The medicine men of pirate crews are crude and their methods even cruder.

They must have held him down. The way his crew revere him—they must have been present to see his suffering on their behalf, and surely they would have helped the only way they knew how.

Like a sloop catching a breeze, she drifts across the room to him. He watches her come and the nearer she gets, the more she perceives the struggle in him.

She cocks her head to one side. “Do you not wish to speak?”

He shakes his head, once.

“Then we will not speak.” Madi reaches for the ties of her dress.

Silver’s pale eyes follow the movement of her fingers then of the cloth as it falls away. Madi unties the belt around her waist, draping it over the low wall next to her doorway, and undoes the ties of her full skirt, stepping out of it as it falls to pool at her feet.

When she bends to undo the leather straps of her boots, Silver surprises her by dropping smoothly to his own knees. His fingers are deft and deferential and Madi has a sneaking dark suspicion that he has fully recognized the part of her who enjoys the power she has over him.

The idea lodges uncomfortably in her breast and once she has stepped out of her boots, she reaches down to catch his chin and tilt it up until she can see his eyes. “I will tell you no if I wish you to stop. Absent the presence of that word, you are free to do anything that you choose.”

His head cocks to one side and she can easily read the question in the playful challenge of his eyebrows. _Anything?_

“Yes,” she says, and hopes that he does not make her regret it. Kofi is not far away.

Suddenly he shifts and Madi can’t help the undignified grunt of surprise she makes as he lifts her weight. He’s holding her upright and tossing one of her legs easily over his shoulder before—before—Madi gasps and jerks in his grasp before he gentles his tongue to something her body will allow. She grabs his shoulder to stabilize herself, but she quickly realizes that she needn’t worry: he has her.

She had thought him a clever man before this; now she feels his physical strength, and trembles at the so-careful grip of his hands on her thighs. He makes her quake harder yet with his mouth, his clever mouth that moves his men so deftly that they do not feel themselves shift. That mouth is on her now, speaking a different language, and Madi feels both powerful and helpless, mastered and worshipped. The storm breaks over her and she rides it out against his tongue.

In the aftermath she pants and wobbles, unsteady on her one leg. Like him, she realizes suddenly, and laughs. Silver makes a questioning noise against the skin of her inner thigh and she digs her fingers into his hair, scratching his scalp. The noise turns into a faint moan and she smiles, scratching more even as she extricates herself from his grasp and gets both feet back on the ground.

He blinks up at her, his mouth slick with her wetness, and Madi rests one hand on the collar of his shirt. “I would like to see you, as well. Will you let me?”

He hesitates, this time unable to hold her gaze—but then he nods. Madi steps back, doing him the courtesy of not helping while he stands. Once he does, he leans against the edge of a bookshelf and begins divesting himself of his clothing. Last time they had done this on the bed in a fumbling rush, racing each other’s hands; Madi had thought the tempo born of desire but now she wonders if Silver was simply racing his own nerve.

There is no rush, now. He takes off the knee-length coat—so like Captain Flint’s, and Madi cannot help the flare of animosity; she tamps it down—and pulls off his shirt. The muscles of his arms and chest flex as he moves.

Removing his breeches is difficult, as he must balance on one foot. By the time he straightens again, fully nude, he is shivering slightly, and she cannot say whether the strain is in his body or his mind.

They lie down on her bed. Silver watches her and the struggle grows. His face twists with it. They lie side by side, looking into each other’s eyes, but inside he is writhing.

Lifting her hand, Madi traces the delicate skin under his eye, where the skin is marked with lines. He has strange eyes, for a Christian man—but maybe they are not so strange, for the kind of man that John Silver is.

“Are you a Hebrew?” she asks.

His strange, pale eyes widen, and a bit of fear blooms to the surface again. Finally he nods once, his hair moving against the blankets of her bed in a soft susurrus.

“I have heard that your people say you fight with your god. The Christians and Saracens I have known speak of obedience. They fear their gods, and that has always seemed strange to me. But then I think—‘if the beasts had hands that could paint and carve, the horses would make the image of their gods like horses, and the oxen would make theirs to look like oxen.’ All people imagine their gods to look like themselves; why should they not behave as they do? As Christian men desire obedience from the world, as they demand our fear of them, so they make their Christian god fearsome and jealous.

“And yours?” She traces the line of his brow, down to his cheekbone. His eyelashes flutter but his gaze stays intent on her face. “I have never known one of your people who was not a fighter. You must all be, I think, to have survived a world that so desires your end. Everyone in this village knows that same fight, from the youngest to the eldest. I know it. I think—I believe that you have been fighting harder than some. The world, your god, other men, yourself.

“So let us agree, that here, in this bed: we do not fight. It is not needed. I am safe here, and so are you.”

As she speaks his expression smooths. When she finishes, he shuts his eyes; for a moment she thinks he will sleep again but then he is pushing forward blind, pressing his face to her breast. His breath against her skin is ragged.

His hand slides up the inside of her knee and Madi arches, letting him settle between her legs. Earlier in the day she had thought long about how to present this to her mother, who will no doubt be skeptical; Madi will say that this man she has taken to bed can be moved by the wind the way their people move, that she can fill his sails and guide him to where they all need to go. That he, like them, has reason to fear Christian men and women, and to wish to live free of them.

She does not think these things now, as he fills her body with his. There is no fight, here. She holds the back of his neck and twines her heel behind his good knee, and only lets herself think of him, and her, and this bed.

**Author's Note:**

> “The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,  
> While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.  
> Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,  
> And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods  
> Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape  
> Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”  
> \--Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, 570-475 BC. Madi is as big a book nerd as Flint.
> 
> The title does not come from the Willa Cather quote, it came from my own brain.


End file.
